Adviser Quits, Says Star Wars Will Never Work

July 14, 1985|By United Press International

WASHINGTON — A computer scientist who has been a consultant to the military for more than a decade has resigned from a Star Wars advisory panel, convinced its complex anti-missile defense will not work and research for it will be a waste of money.

''My judgment is that research in Star Wars is going to fail and I believe this so strongly that I'm willing to stake my professional reputation on this,'' said David Parnas, a professor at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. ''I don't believe anybody is going to build this thing.''

Parnas, who resigned in June from a panel whose 10 members are paid $1,000 a day, reached his conclusion after spending two weeks preparing position papers identifying the research problems connected with creating a computer program for managing a battle against incoming missiles and nuclear warheads. ''I came to the conclusion that they weren't going to solve them'' because of ''very fundamental mathematical problems,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Others disagreed, saying Parnas acted too hastily in reaching a conclusion about a concept that has not been fully developed and emphasizing that the purpose of the panel is to explore the problems and try to solve them.

Parnas, a U.S. citizen, is cleared for access to military secrets and has worked as a consultant for the Naval Research Laboratory since 1972.

Other scientists, including nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, winner of a Nobel Prize, also oppose Star Wars on the grounds that it will be unworkable and may fuel the arms race. But Parnas' resignation is the first known case in which a scientist hired by the strategic defense initiative office has quit the program.

''There are other opinions,'' said another panel member, Charles Seitz, a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena.

Navy Cmdr. James Offutt, deputy director for battle management, command, control and communications of the program, said he was ''a little disappointed'' in Parnas' ''lack of scientific methodology'' in reaching the abrupt conclusion that the complex system will not work.

Others on the panel ''have come back with issue papers and are enthusiastic,'' he said in a telephone interview. ''It's a satisfying type of work to see if researchers can meet the challenge.''

''It's a little premature to throw up our hands,'' said Air Force Maj. David Audley, the program manager for battle management technology. ''We're trying to formulate the questions. We don't have the answers yet.''

The effort to find a workable battle management system of sensors, tracking devices and ground- and space-based lasers that can destroy missiles and their warheads from their time of launch nearly to impact is part of the $26 billion the administration projects will be spent on Star Wars research in five years. Computer software must be designed to operate a system requiring instant communications among sensors that detect missile launchers and discriminate between real and decoy warheads, tracking and aiming mechanisms and the lasers that will fire at the oncoming phalanx of nuclear-armed weapons.

Software programs vary from the several hundred lines that run a home computer game to the 3 million lines Offutt said is needed to operate the space shuttle. He estimated the Star Wars battle management system will require 10 million lines.

The thrust of Parnas' argument is that a fail-safe system cannot be devised because it cannot be tested until the moment of truth arrives -- when Soviet missiles are hurtling toward the United States. Computer programs require numerous test runs to be sure all the bugs are out of them.

''Because of the extreme demands on the system and our inability to test it, we will never be able to believe, with any confidence, that we have succeeded,'' Parnas wrote in a letter of resignation to Offutt. ''Most of the money spent will be wasted.''